Modifying many rows in a table
SQLite
SQLite is very slow when doing commits, because of the technique used to ensure data integrity (see SQLite documentation for details).
When a program executes a DML statement like INSERT, it will be automatically
committed by SQLite. As result, if you do not enclose the SQL instruction between BEGIN
WORK / COMMIT WORK, there will be as many commits as data manipulation
statements.
Solution
If a program must modify many rows in a table, execute the SQL statement within a transaction
block delimited by BEGIN WORK / COMMIT WORK instructions. This
will dramatically speed up the program with SQLite, and even with other non-Informix database
servers.